Fake Geek Girls? You Think Women WANT This Job?

Posted on December 6, 2012 · 1 Comment

Apparently the science fiction community is being flooded – FLOODED, I TELL YOU – by fake geek girls: women with insufficient geek cred who are only pretending to be geeks for the attention.

Say what? Being a female geek is a tough job thanks to the cretins who are put out that female geeks won’t, well, put out. Do you really think it’s likely that women are going to volunteer for this?

Do you think women are lining up waiting for their big chance to struggle with an uphill career? Face sexual harassment at cons? Get stalked online? Be treated like a maidservant or a cuddlebunny or an NPC instead of a peer of equal knowledge and experience?

Women aren’t supposed to be able to fix computers or name all 79 original episodes of Star Trek. It goes against the natural order of geekdom. The genre that prides itself in being “strange and unusual” thinks it’s too strange and unusual to include women.

What’s interesting is how certain levels of female geekdom, over time, have become reluctantly tolerated. I can remember when being a female Doctor Who fan was considered weird. Today, girls are allowed to be Whovians because it’s assumed they’re only doing so to watch David Tennant’s rear. (Clearly ridiculous. We’re ALL in it to watch David Tennant’s rear. Matt Smith’s, too.)

Similarly, girls are permitted to like comic books, but only if they emit the pre-requisite cooing over Loki and dress in provocative superhero cosplay for the benefit of the men around them.

As a geek woman, I like what I like and it just so happens that most of it is geeky. I didn’t start reading Hitchhiker’s Guide so I could impress my boyfriend. I haven’t spent 20+ years in technology because Windows is soooo cute when it crashes.

The idea that women would willingly subject themselves to the misogynistic crap that comes standard with female geekdom seems unlikely at best. Somehow I can’t picture a woman secretly fine-tuning her knowledge of python or Cerebus just so she can bask in the attention. Because the attention she’s likely to get is going to be negative – “You can’t like that, it’s for GUYS!”

Most female geeks I’ve met don’t want male geeks to know the extent of their geekdom. They hide it, because once people find out you’re a female geek, you’re never good enough.

Like when a male geek finds out that you, a female geek, like something he likes. Then you get subjected to the big interrogation – Which episode did this happen in? Who guest starred in season 2? How many spaceships are in the background in such-and-such scene? You have to prove that you REALLY know your geek in order to be accepted as a geek, and even then you’re never truly accepted.

It’s the same in IT. Women in technology are constantly having to prove we know our stuff even better than the men do. Yet we still have to put up with the doubt expressed by those around us: Why are you here? What makes you think you belong?

Geekdom is the love of something you’ve found, the adoration that makes you cry out to everyone around you, “YES! This is an AWESOME THING and you must experience it!” Why is that okay for men and not for women? And why are female geeks so threatening that some feel the need to invent the idea of “fake geek girls” so that any women who claim geekdom can be readily dismissed as Not Geek Enough?

Here are some blogs from people who are talking about fake geek girl syndrome and what it represents. Food for thought.

What do you think of the fake geek girl phenomenon?

image via I Can Haz Cheezburger

Filed Under: fantasyworld, techtips Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Zaphod’s In The Phone Book: Finding Hidden Gems Of Geekdom

Posted on July 6, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Have you ever run across something geeky where you least expected it?

There are plenty of deliberate shout-outs within the fantasy/science fiction genre, like Easter eggs in video games and so forth. I’m referring to those little gems of geekdom you sometimes stumble across in the wider world.

I’ve posted about how I fell in love with The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy after discovering it in the most unexpected of places: the library of my prim-n-proper girls’ school. Afterwards I became obsessed with all things Hitchhiker’s. This being the days before the Internet, and even before BBSes, there was no one with whom to share my newfound passion.

So I would find myself sitting alone in my room, doing bored tweenager things like leafing through the phone book to see if anyone happened to have the same names as the characters. I figured there was a chance of an Arthur Dent or a Ford Prefect, but I giggled as I flipped to the B’s, knowing there wouldn’t be a Zaphod Beeblebrox.

But there was!

Zaphod Beeblebrox, it said. I had to read it several times to be sure. An Arthur Dent or a Ford Prefect could be coincidence, but this? My curiosity overrode my shy nature, and the wrath of my adoptive parents. I called. One ring. Two rings. Three.

“Hello! You’ve reached Zaphod Beeblebrox! I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now but I’ve got a few things going on…”

The recording played some clips from the radio series, and concluded with a Groucho Marx impression. To say I was thrilled was an understatement. Someone geeky had gone through all the trouble of making that recording and putting the entry in the phone book, just in case another geek might come across it. It was like a little “hello” across the wide, boring universe.

Nerds like to do this, it seems. We like to write notes to each other and stash them in unlikely places. I notice it in IT, with server names. It’s always fun to see that “fancywebserver.bigcompany.com” has a private name like “sithlord” or “nazgul”. (You can often tell how much the geeks enjoy working at the company based on what they name the servers.)

Some geek jokes have transcended their origins, like our term for junk mail, “spam”, which comes from the Monty Python sketch. You’ve seen 404 errors on Web sites: “page not found”. I hear there’s a proposal to honor Ray Bradbury with HTML error code 451, to be used when governments block web sites: “Forbidden: unavailable for legal reasons”. That’s a geeky joke that makes a hell of a statement.

I wonder what happened to the person who set up that Zaphod Beeblebrox recording. I hope they’re somewhere on the Internet making memes.

What awesomely geeky things have you found in unexpected places? Share in the comments!

Filed Under: fantasyworld Tagged With: , ,

My Love Affair With The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

Posted on March 8, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Today’s the anniversary of the first Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy radio show. How did you first become enamored with that wholly remarkable book?

I discovered Hitchhiker’s in the library of the stodgy girls’ school I attended. Think Catholic school, minus the Catholic but plus plus on the plaid uniforms. As you can guess, the library was dull enough to bring a tear to Giles’s eye (but a bit short on demonology texts for his tastes, I’d imagine). There were the obligatory copies of Emily Dickenson, a bust of Margaret Mead on the table, inspirational “reading is FUNdamental” posters on the walls.

And, way in the back, a whole shelf of science fiction.

Somebody in that school was a serious closet SF fan. It was like a hidden message for future likeminded students, a little cache of bliss among fifty-year-old copies of Great Expectations*. Besides Hitchhiker’s, there was Asimov’s The Caves Of Steel which introduced me to his Robots novels, some Heinlein juveniles including Podkayne of Mars – as well as Stranger In A Strange Land, which proves no real librarian ever looked at that shelf or they would have spirited such naughty tomes away from the innocent eyes of us young ladies.

I’d already become addicted to SFF through Star Trek, Buck Rogers, and the original Battlestar Galactica. Finding Hitchhiker’s was like a fresh delivery of lemon-soaked paper napkins. The library card filled with my initials. I went out and bought what was then a trilogy, in both book and audio form. I could quote parts from memory. My stodgy school became accustomed to the girl who wandered around muttering about Frogstar Fighters. They called me a nerd, but I didn’t care. The fact that somebody had written a bestselling series like Hitchhiker’s proved that I wasn’t the only one who thought science fiction was fun.

I must have discovered Doctor Who and Hitchhiker’s Guide around the same time (insert irony here), because I can’t remember which one I fell in love with first. I do remember that we didn’t get the Douglas Adams episodes for ages thanks to the ridiculous policies of our local PBS station, so by the time I saw The Pirate Planet I was already addicted to Hitchhiker’s. Part of the allure was the quintessential Britishness of it, during the 1980s when everything British was kewl. (I was am also a huge Duran Duran fan, which probably contributed to my infatuation.)

But there was something special about Hitchhiker’s. You couldn’t read it and not laugh your ass off. It was the perfect diversion because it was so ridiculous, so witty, and so British. The latter, as I discovered, doesn’t really translate. I bought a foreign language copy in France, in which Zaphod becomes Zippy Bibicy (as in, BBC) and Ford Prefect is Ford Escort because apparently that’s funnier in French. It just wasn’t the same. As Mickey Smith comments in the Doctor Who episode The Chrismas Invasion (which itself is an homage to Hitchhiker’s), if the world was ending the British would have tea. That’s a very Hitchhiker’s sentiment.

Over thirty years later, Hitchhiker’s has become such a part of our culture here in the U.S. that you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the number 42 or the phrase “Don’t Panic!” Take some time today to celebrate The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, before that Frogstar Fighter Class D comes to get you.

* Don’t get me wrong. I like classic literature, just not Dickens. I’m more of your Mark Twain type. Sorry, Vincent.

Filed Under: fantasyworld Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,